Early Cultures - Native American

Clothing of Native American Cultures

The clothing of Native Americans was closely related to the environment in
which they lived and their religious beliefs. Ranging from tropical and
desert regions, to woodlands and mountains, to Arctic tundra, Native
Americans developed diverse styles of clothing. In the warmest regions,
little clothing was worn. Among the peoples of California, for example,
men were normally naked, but women wore simple knee-length skirts. In the
cooler regions, more clothing styles developed. Among the tribes of the
Plains, breechclouts, or loincloths, leggings, tunic shirts for men, and
skirts and dresses for women were created. But in the coldest areas of the
Subarctic and Arctic, warm trousers, hooded anoraks, or jackets, and
mittens protected people from freezing temperatures. Despite the vast
differences in climate and clothing styles, Native Americans had in common
the basic notion of living in harmony with nature. This idea influenced
the materials and designs they used for clothing.

Animal skins

Before the European colonization of the Americas that began in the
seventeenth century
C.E.
, most Native American people lived close to nature, making their living
from the resources that were plentiful in the world around them. They
largely survived by fishing, hunting, and gathering edible plants,
though some tribes, such as the Navajo in the southwestern United States
and the Oneida of northern New York, tended flocks of sheep or grew
crops to add to what they found in nature. Almost all of these tribes
used the skins of the animals they hunted or raised. They developed
methods of tanning the skins to make soft leather, and from this leather
they made clothing and shoes. Leather clothing was soft and strong, and,
if the animal's fur was left on the skin, it was also very warm.
Some native people, like the Apaches of the western plains and the
Algonquin of southern Canada, even used leather to make the walls of
their dwelling places.

The religious beliefs of many Indian people included the idea that all
of nature, including animals and plants, had spiritual power. Many also
believed that by wearing parts of an animal a person could gain some of
that animal's power and strength. In this way, the wearing of
animal skins became more than just putting on a form of comfortable and
durable clothing. It became a part of Native Americans' religious
practice and a way to improve oneself by literally "putting
on" some of the desirable qualities of the animals.

Plant fibers

Before the arrival of great numbers of Europeans in the seventeenth
century, Native Americans also used the animals and plants they found
around them to make food, shelter, and clothing. One of the most
plentiful resources in many areas was the bark of trees, which was
stripped, dried, and shredded to make fibers. These fibers were used to
weave soft, comfortable clothing. Typical shredded bark

A young girl dressed in a cedar bark costume. Native Americans
often used bark to weave skirts, aprons, capes, and hats.
Reproduced by permission of the
.

Many tribes made bark clothing, using the trees that grew close by. In
the southeastern United States, the Cherokee used mulberry bark to make
soft shirts. The Pomo living along the West Coast used shredded redwood
bark to make wraparound skirts, while the Paiute and Washoe of the
deserts further east shredded the plentiful bark of the sagebrush.
Tribes of the rainy Northwest coast of North America, such as the
Tlingit and the Suquamish, wove rain-hats and raincoats from the bark of
the cedar tree.

Most clothing was made by Indian women, who also prepared the fibers for
weaving. Bark was stripped from small trees and then dried in the sun
before being pounded into a flexible mass and shredded into thin, strong
fibers. These fibers were woven into fabric and made into clothing that
was both comfortable and protective. Native Americans loved to bring
beauty into their lives by decorating even everyday items, so sometimes
bark clothing was decorated with fringe, painted pictures, porcupine
quills, or animal teeth and claws. Bark clothing was difficult to clean,
but bark was an abundant resource, so most bark clothing was simply
discarded when it became too dirty to wear.

Woven cloth

Although many tribes used handmade methods of weaving, natives of the
American Southwest were the first group to develop a loom, or weaving
device, for weaving cloth. In 1200
C.E.
, well before the arrival of the first Europeans, Indians in the
Southwest grew cotton and wove it into cloth. They also wove yucca,
wool, feathers, and even human hair into cloth. Their breechclouts,
leggings, and skirts were often made of woven fibers.

As Native Americans had continued contact with Europeans and white
settlers, their ability to continue making clothing according to their
traditional ways was destroyed. Native Americans had eagerly
incorporated new items, such as glass beads and silver ornaments, into
their wardrobes when they first started trading with whites. But
continued contact with whites made it impossible for Native Americans to
maintain their traditional ways of clothing themselves. Pushed off their
homelands and onto reservations, government land set aside for them to
live, in the late 1800s, Native
Americans lost the ability to hunt for or gather the necessary
materials for their clothes. Their new circumstances forced them to buy
clothing from whites, which drastically changed the way Native Americans
dressed.